You Take A Stick Of Bamboo

And cook it in the springtime, oh oh, oh oh, yummy! I’m lucky enough to have a source of fresh bamboo, which is so different from the canned stuff as to be unrecognizable.

My friend Jim grows many varieties of bamboo in his backyard. He gave me a bagful with three different kinds. How does he cook it? He doesn’t. Fortunately, my other friend Liz does. She recommended the Chinese red-cooked method.

Raw Bamboo Shoots, With a Quarter For Scale

First you have to simmer it for an hour to tenderize it, then proceed with your recipe. I simmered, and then stored it to cook later in the week, but before I got around to red-cooking it, I had an emergency – a dish in desperate need of a vegetable, without time to boil the pokeweed I had picked earlier. Luckily, the bamboo was just sitting there waiting. It worked really well.

I had a package of sirloin steak tips and a recipe for steak in Balsamic vinegar. I added some sweet onions and planned to serve it over a scallion pancake (pa jeon), which came frozen from Trader Joe’s. (This pancake is not up to the dish served in Korean restaurants, but it’s not half bad.)

Steak and Bamboo Cooking

A quick slice and dice of three or four bamboo stalks and my dish was complete. I just added them at the end of cooking and let them heat up.

Finished Dish – Steak and Bamboo over Pa Jeon

Delicious. Thanks, Jim!

Share this:

About Judy

I have been cooking and eating all my life. I help run the Olney Farmers and Artists Market in Olney, Maryland, arrange their weekly chef demos and blog from that website (olneyfarmersmarket.org) on Market matters. This personal blog is for all things foodie: cookbooks, products, restaurants, eating.